Content Removal Policies Dmca Takedown Policy (GitHub)
The GitHub DMCA Takedown Policy outlines GitHub’s notice-and-takedown process for copyright infringement claims, providing a clear framework for submitting DMCA notices, counter notices, and handling circumvention claims. It is part of GitHub’s official legal and compliance policies, making it a reliable and widely trusted resource for rights-holders and developers navigating copyright issues.
DMCA Takedown Policy
Welcome to [company name]'s Guide to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, commonly known as the "DMCA." This page is not meant as a comprehensive primer to the statute. However, if you've received a DMCA takedown notice targeting content you've posted on [company name] or if you're a rights-holder looking to issue such a notice, this page will hopefully help to demystify the law a bit as well as our policies for complying with it.
(If you just want to submit a notice, you can skip to G. Submitting Notices.)
As with all legal matters, it is always best to consult with a professional about your specific questions or situation. We strongly encourage you to do so before taking any action that might impact your rights. This guide isn't legal advice and shouldn't be taken as such.
What Is the DMCA?
In order to understand the DMCA and some of the policy lines it draws, it's perhaps helpful to consider life before it was enacted.
The DMCA provides a safe harbor for service providers that host user-generated content. Since even a single claim of copyright infringement can carry statutory damages of up to $150,000, the possibility of being held liable for user-generated content could be very harmful for service providers. With potential damages multiplied across millions of users, cloud-computing and user-generated content sites like YouTube, Facebook, or [company name] probably never would have existed without the DMCA (or at least not without passing some of that cost downstream to their users).
The DMCA addresses this issue by creating a copyright liability safe harbor for internet service providers hosting allegedly infringing user-generated content. Essentially, so long as a service provider follows the DMCA's notice-and-takedown rules, it won't be liable for copyright infringement based on user-generated content. Because of this, it is important for [company name] to maintain its DMCA safe-harbor status.
The DMCA also prohibits the circumvention of technical measures that effectively control access to works protected by copyright.
DMCA Notices In a Nutshell
The DMCA provides two simple, straightforward procedures that all [company name] users should know about: (i) a takedown-notice procedure for copyright holders to request that content be removed; and (ii) a counter-notice procedure for users to get content re-enabled when content is taken down by mistake or misidentification.
DMCA takedown notices are used by copyright owners to ask [company name] to take down content they believe to be infringing. If you are a software designer or developer, you create copyrighted content every day. If someone else is using your copyrighted content in an unauthorized manner on [company name] , you can send us a DMCA takedown notice to request that the infringing content be changed or removed.
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About this template
What is this template?
This is a public-facing policy document explaining statutory procedures for managing copyright disputes on a digital platform. It is not an agreement between parties but a set of procedural rules including specific timelines like the 1 business day window for content modification. It contains unique sections on the treatment of software forks and technical circumvention claims.
When should you use it?
Use this policy when operating a website that hosts user-generated content to maintain safe harbor status under US copyright law. Use a standard Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy instead if you are defining general platform behavior rather than specific copyright notice procedures.
What's inside
| Clause | Name | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| What Is the DMCA? | Notice and Takedown Rules | Provides a liability safe harbor for service providers hosting user-generated content provided they follow statutory notice-and-takedown rules. |
| A.1 | Notice Preparation | Obliges copyright owners to investigate and confirm that the disputed content is not protected by the fair-use doctrine before filing. |
| A.3 | Response Window | Provides the user approximately 1 business day to delete or modify content specified in a notice before the repository is disabled. |
| A.5 | Implied Retraction | Treats silence from a copyright owner longer than two weeks as an implied retraction of the original takedown notice. |
| A.8 | Legal Action Deadline | Requires copyright owners to provide a copy of a court-filed complaint within 10-14 days to keep content disabled after a counter notice. |
| C | Circumvention Claims | Requires claimants to provide three specific technical statements describing how a project circumvents technical protection measures. |
| F | Repeated Infringement | Grants the company sole discretion to terminate accounts for users who repeatedly infringe intellectual property rights. |
Who it's for
- a service provider hosting user-generated software repositories or packages
- a copyright owner seeking to remove unauthorized content from a hosting platform
- a developer responding to an allegation of copyright infringement via counter notice
- a company reviewing circumvention claims against technical protection measures
Law it's drafted under
United States note
This version is drafted for US law generally. Contract, employment and consumer rules vary by state — for example on non-competes and at-will employment. Tell GitLaw which state applies and it adjusts the draft.
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